The Murder Line (C.I.D. Room Book 8)

by Roderic Jeffries

  If he did as they demanded and discovered the information they sought, would he have done any real permanent harm? No one could seriously argue that giving information on why a man was in jail could hurt justice. His action would be a betrayal, of course, but unimportant in practical terms. He blanked his mind to what could lie beyond this one act of betrayal because at any cost, at all costs, he could not suffer Heather to be publicly humiliated… especially since he had previously privately humiliated her with his own jealous disbelief in her.

  He picked up the receiver, asked for an outside line, and dialled New Scotland Yard. The county liaison officer, now Inspector Fryberg, was not in but his assistant, Sergeant Teesdale, was.

  Teesdale came on the line and Rowan asked him to get through to Interpol to ask the Spanish authorities what they had on the Englishman, Harry Longman, arrested in Palma on the fifteenth of the previous month. Teesdale said he’d do what he could, but officialdom in Spain often took its time. Rowan said it was priority and that he’d ring back the next day.

  He leaned back in his chair and became aware of the fact that he’d been sweating quite heavily: his shirt was damp under the armpits and down the back.

  The telephone rang and the desk sergeant said that a hit-and-run had been reported from Ascrey Cross, just inside eastern division’s territory, Rowan made a note for Kerr.

  He stood up, walked over to the window, lit a cigarette. He’d done what he had to. His first priority had to be to defend Heather. By comparison, nothing else mattered.

  *

  When Rowan telephoned London at six in the evening on Monday, Sergeant Teesdale told him that the police in Palma had, surprisingly, already come up with the required information. Longman was held on a charge of drunkenness and assault on two police officers.

  Rowan returned home at eight-thirty. Heather and Tracy were watching the television. He nodded, when Tracy wasn’t looking. Heather said to Tracy: “You’d better go up to bed now.”

  “Not until this programme’s finished…”

  “Now.”

  Tracy hesitated.

  “I’ll come up and read to you,” said Rowan.

  Tracy determined to make the best of an unusual offer. “Ten pages,” she demanded. “Or eleven, if any of them aren’t properly filled.”

  He agreed and she left, cheerful and relaxed because she knew her parents had come closer together than she could ever remember.

  As soon as Tracy had shut the door behind her, Heather said: “You’ve got the information?”

  “Yes,” he answered.

  She came round the settee and pressed against him. “Oh, God, if… if only…”

  He interrupted her. “Forget the if onlys, darling. I’ve heard too many people use them when it’s too late. What’s done is done.”

  “But… but at least it’s all over now.” She rested her cheek against his. “It makes me feel sick knowing what it’ll have meant to you to have to do it. I was such a coward, hoping you wouldn’t refuse so that everyone would learn what had happened and would think…”

  “I couldn’t,” he interrupted quietly.

  He went upstairs and read ten pages to Tracy from her book, allowed himself into being wheedled into reading another three because her eager demands held something very precious for him, then read one more because thirteen would have been unlucky. He tucked her up, switched off the light, and left the bedroom.

  He walked along the very short passage to the small landing. The carpet here was deep pile and expensive. The three prints hanging on the walls, of ancient Fortrow, were quite valuable. The stair carpet had cost even more than the one on the landing. In turn a source of pride and resentment, these things could now be seen to have been bought at appalling cost.

  He returned to the sitting room and said Tracy was tucked up for the night, then poured out a drink for each of them. They drank in silence, each deep in thought, and when the telephone rang both were visibly startled.

  “Have you got the info, copper?”

  He noted, without surprise, that the man spoke with vindictive pleasure. Nothing gave a villain so much pleasure as making a split dance to his tune. “Longman got tight in a bar, insulted some of the locals, threw bottles around, and tried to belt a couple of policemen who went into the bar to see what all the trouble was about.”

  “And that’s the full story?”

  “Yes. He wasn’t nicked for H-running.”

  There was a pause, then a harsh curse. “Listen, copper, don’t get clever.”

  Rowan said: “Will you send the package along with the photos?”

  There was a coarse laugh. “Are you round the twist? You’re swimming with us. I’ve a message for you. You and us are working together now so if we stay healthy, you stay healthy, we get trouble, you get trouble. And there ain’t anything gets the courts so fiery as a bent copper, is there? So you learn something we’d like to hear, you telephone the number two one two, three six four. And, copper, it won’t do no good trying to trace that number. It’s a Tom what won’t even tell you the time of the day.” The man rang off.

  Rowan replaced the receiver. He walked back to his chair, picked up the glass, and finished the drink.

  Heather was white-faced. “Were they… Were they refusing to send the photos and the other things?”

  He nodded, then saw she was beginning to cry. He moved to where she sat and rested his left hand on her shoulder. “They’re keeping their claws in me, Heather, as an insurance.”

  She put her hand to her mouth in a gesture of shocked helplessness. There can be no end other than ruin, thought Rowan, with strange detachment.

  *

  Murphy listened to Jarrold’s report.

  “Longman got picked up for playing dumb, Ed, getting tight, belting the local coppers. No one suspects nothing about him going there to meet the other courier. The Spanish coppers aren’t even guessing.” Murphy stared at Jarrold’s pumpkin of a face, beady with sweat because the night was warm and Jarrold perspired very freely, then looked away. It had been a near thing. “Would he talk, Titch, if someone had ideas and started questioning him?”

  Jarrold shook his head and two drops of perspiration slithered down his flushed cheeks. “He ain’t dumb: he’s got a missus.”

  Murphy nodded. They always tried to employ couriers with families because then they had a ready means of ensuring loyalty… So now the line could be reopened and fresh heroin hurried in. Not before time. Stocks were very low, because demand had been built right up. Two consignments must come through by air and a third, and larger one, by sea.

  *

  Steve Allen was discharged from hospital six weeks after his admission, exactly five weeks after being moved off the critically ill list.

  During his six weeks in hospital, no one had come to visit him. He was bad news, a fact which had become painfully clear to him during the last two weeks when he was able to think with reasonable clarity. He decided that if he had a future, it wasn’t in Fortrow. The mob had taken over everything and they’d never forget that he’d tried to take them for a bigger cut than he’d originally agreed.

  Outside the hospital, his first problem was money. His wife earned a fair wage, working in a small factory in London, but she’d washed her hands of him years ago. Yet, he thought, and although he could reason some things out he found he couldn’t plan in any great detail because his mind went fuzzy, he had to have money to take him to wherever he was going, to do whatever he was going to do. Margot, for whom he’d pimped, was the only person he could think of to look to for help.

  He arrived at her house at four in the afternoon. He was a tall man but he seemed to have shrunk and his face would never look as it had: the hospital had warned him there was fear of permanent damage to his kidneys. The maid — who worked for the three women who used this house — was too stupid or too careless to show any emotion on seeing him. He climbed the stairs, puffing slightly from shortage of breath, and crossed to the right-ha
nd door.

  Margot, unlike the maid, was clearly uneasily surprised to see him. He smiled at her, his badly fitting new teeth, replacing those which had been knocked out, making the smile more of a grimace. “’Ullo, Margot. I’ve just been let out of the ’ospital.”

  She realised that he had become a different man, that he was finished, and that as far as she was concerned he was no longer a threat. “What d’you want?” She looked at her wristwatch. “I’m busy again soon, Steve.”

  He sat down on the chair by the side of the bed.

  “You can’t wait around,” she said sharply, gaining confidence with every second. “Like I said, I’m busy. So what d’you want?”

  He’d been hoping for a sympathetic reception and he was shocked — and frightened — to discover that she was rejecting him so completely. “I… I reckon on leaving Fortrow, Margot.”

  She did not try to hide her relief at the news.

  “I’m going back to the Smoke.”

  “Best place for you. You’ll be much better off there. It’ll be safer.”

  “Yeah, but I ain’t got… I ain’t got much folding.” For a moment, they both remembered the days when his wallet had been thick with notes and he’d spent money as if it was going out of fashion.

  “Well, I ain’t anything to give,” she said hurriedly.

  “But you said you was busy, so you must’ve made…”

  “It costs me plenty to operate.”

  “I looked after you well.” He fumbled for words. “All the time you and me was together…”

  She abruptly decided that it might be very much cheaper for her to give him something now if that meant he’d leave Fortrow. “I could let you have ten, but that’ll clean me out.”

  “Ten? Just ten quid?” Momentarily, he spoke with some of his old belligerence.

  Her expression became sullen. “Take it or leave it.”

  His belligerence vanished. He pleaded: “I need more than that, straight. To get up to the Smoke. You’ve been doing good…”

  “And like I told you, it costs me. And I ain’t making any extra recent on account of H being short.” She realised from his expression that he knew nothing of the heroin trade and that it had been a mistake to mention it. Hurriedly, she added: “And there ain’t going to be any around until after the twentieth, so I ain’t going to get anything extra.”

  He tried to threaten her as he would have done in the past, but the words refused to come. He thought of cursing her, but then was afraid she might give him nothing. “Let’s ’ave the ten quid,” he said finally. She went to the cupboard, made certain he couldn’t watch, and took two five-pound notes out of the toe of a shoe.

  “Now get,” she said.

  When he left the house, he walked on the right-hand side of the road in the warm sunshine. Ten quid. Ten lousy quid. In the old days, ten quid was for a morning. He knew a renewed hatred for the man who’d beaten him up and for the men who’d given the order. If only he could shop ’em. But he didn’t know who was at the top and although he could shop Harps they’d know it must have been he who’d done it and they’d get him. Like they got Vince Wraight. Then he thought — with a sudden surge of cunning — that if he passed word on there was a consignment of heroin due in on the twentieth, no one could possibly suspect the information had come from him — Margot wouldn’t remember what she’d said to him, but even if she did she’d keep her mouth tight shut for her own safety. On such information, the coppers would go to town searching for the consignment. That would teach the mob they couldn’t push him around and get away with it.

  Chapter 9

  Fusil doodled on the sheet of foolscap paper, drawing a series of stick men and women who held hands. He looked up at the calendar on the wall and checked for perhaps the sixth time since the information had come in that the date was the twelfth. Eight days before the twentieth.

  Anonymous tip-offs were a large part of police intelligence and all too often an infuriating part. It was so difficult to separate the genuine from the spurious or the attempt to create a smoke-screen. Every policeman worth his salt developed an instinct concerning which tip-offs were genuine and which weren’t, but only a fool would claim to be right most of the time.

  He thought this tip-off concerning a coming consignment of heroin was probably genuine. In its favour was its most annoying characteristic, its vagueness: how, from where, morning, noon, or night? How many ways of bringing heroin into Fortrow were there? Road, sea, or air. As Fortrow was a thriving port and had an airport, it was surely more likely that the heroin was due to come in directly from abroad rather than entering elsewhere and being trans-shipped by road? Every trans-shipment meant extra danger and very great extra expense. Air offered much the quicker form of shipment, sea the safer, because the drop could be made at sea, especially if there was an alarm.

  How many planes would arrive on the twentieth, how many ships would dock? Last ports of call would help. Mostly, heroin came from Hong Kong or Marseilles, where there were men with the skills and equipment to make it from the morphine base. But when planes or ships arrived from those two places, they were automatically suspect and subject to extensive searches, so that the line was seldom so direct. Heroin might go from Hong Kong to Cape Town, before reaching England, or from Marseilles to the Azores, before turning north and east. What, however, was virtually impossible was that it would be shipped to the Americas and then back across the Atlantic. So any ship from America, north or south, could be eliminated, and any plane or ship from Marseilles or Hong Kong likewise although, paradoxically, such plane or ship would be subject automatically to a heavy search. Any plane or ship on an unscheduled flight or voyage, so that the route would not have been known days beforehand…

  Fusil drew a line through the stick men and women, consigning them to an untimely end. He couldn’t know for certain until he’d checked, but he was prepared to bet his pension that even after all possible eliminations there would still be so many planes and ships whose passengers and crews would have to be searched that the operation would be daunting in prospect, let alone in execution.

  *

  It was the policy both in the borough and county forces not to give the rank and file details of any major operation until the last possible moment, not for fear of deliberate leaks but for fear of unintentional ones. The men’s honesty wasn’t doubted, only that they would be tight-mouthed. The police learned too much from casual information let slip by villains ever to ignore the dangers of the reverse happening.

  Fusil, Braddon, Inspector Harris and Sergeant Pierce of the uniformed branch, and Inspector Plumrose of the county force who was acting as liaison officer since the county force was being called upon to provide a contingent of fifty men and two dogs, spent hours discussing the evidence, sorting out flight and ship arrivals and deciding which could be safely eliminated, arranging for reliefs, for mobile canteens, for communications… They completed their work on the Wednesday at nine-fifteen in the evening and made for the nearest pub. There, over the second pint, Fusil suggested that the men be briefed on the Thursday at sixteen hundred hours. This was agreed. There would then be only nine hours twenty-five minutes before the arrival of the first plane which would have to be checked.

  The local senior water-guard officer was contacted on Thursday. He tried to raise hell. Why the secrecy? Why hadn’t he been told before? Were the police suggesting his men couldn’t be trusted? It was his men who were trained to pick out the drug smuggler — what did any policeman know about the special techniques involved? Braddon was detailed to explain to the water-guard section that they were being treated no differently from the way in which the police were being treated. Braddon was rather good at this sort of a job, perhaps because he looked so much like a bloodhound people automatically believed him implicitly.

  *

  Kywood, who’d been pacing Fusil’s room, suddenly stopped and leaned on the desk with his clenched fists. “Is everything lined up, Bob?”


  “Yes, sir.” Kywood had come up trumps, thought Fusil. There’d been none of his usual nit-picking over details, questioning things merely to remind everyone he was the big white chief. He’d let Fusil organise and had merely backed him up to the hilt whenever necessary. He’d grown in stature to meet a threat potentially larger than any he’d met before.

  Kywood stood upright and jammed his hands in his pockets. “I wonder what the odds are against us picking up a real lead?”

  Fusil shrugged his shoulders. “I wouldn’t go nap on it, that’s for sure. The whisper may have been wrong, the courier may slip through our hands despite everything, we may catch him but learn virtually nothing because their organisation’s too good.”

  “But catch the courier and get him to sing loudly enough, quickly enough, and maybe you could follow up the change-over?”

  “I doubt it. A mob as organised as this one will learn something’s up and melt away.”

  Kywood took his hands from his pockets. Probably, he’d been unrealistic. “There mustn’t be any leak our end.”

  “Not a chance,” said Fusil belligerently.

  Kywood slowly shook his head, to show a certain degree of doubt. He shared Fusil’s absolute belief in the force, yet a small corner of his mind insisted that if a man like Brigadier Row could be subverted, then it could not be beyond the realms of possibility that a serving police officer might also be.

  *

  At four o’clock, Thursday afternoon, Fusil addressed the men in the parade room which, despite all the windows being wide open, soon smelled heavily of humans. He gave them a full briefing, having always believed that men who knew exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it would do the job that little bit better. Afterwards, Sergeant Braddon read out the rota lists. A few men applied for various reasons to be released from the extra work and Inspector Harris, a dour Scot, refused all requests but one, made by a man whose wife was seriously ill.